This piece was written to be accessible for all readers! You don't need to know anything about the videogame to read and enjoy this fic. If you'd like to see some screenshots from the game to go along with the story, look it up on AO3 under the same title and username.
To those following and reviewing - thank you so much!
*Looking for two chapters on Aloy's arrival in Meridian? I deleted them for now until I reach that point in the story. I considered posting them separately, but realized they stick pretty close to canon and I intend to change that when I get there.
The red hair of a little girl disappeared into a patch of long ruby grass. A herd of horse-like machines grazed nearby, with glowing blue lights where their eyes should be. As she moved through the grass, she stumbled on a hidden rock and went sprawling, her heart rate skyrocketing.
One of the beasts perked its head up and nickered, its eyes changing from blue to yellow. Alert mode. The mechanical sound of pistons and the metallic clip-clop of hooves on the hard-packed earth announced the strider's approach. The girl remained ensconced in the foliage, kneeling, waiting, watching the machine through the long strands of grass.
She turned her head ever so slightly to look at a large rock to her right, where her mentor Rost was standing in the shadows, his face barely visible. She caught his eye. He shook his head, holding a finger to his lips. Don't make a sound.
It stopped several feet away, scanning the area with the yellow light shining through rotating lenses on its head. As the head turned, she could hear small parts moving within. This was the closest she had ever been to a machine.
It was very much like an animal. Although it had no organic parts, it seemed to be built in mimicry of organic life. Bundles of synthetic cords took the place of muscle and sinew; solid metal took the place of bone; miniature bellows took the place of lungs. Additionally, the machines' behavior was similar to a boar or a goat. Striders would mind their own business peacefully until encountering a human. When startled, striders and other herd machines would typically cry out in alarm and sprint away.
Aloy wondered from time to time about these unusual beasts, and where they really came from. Rost said the people of the Nora tribe believed in a being called All-Mother, who had created all people and the machines, too. Aloy wasn't so sure. Humans and animals - boar, rabbits, goat, squirrels, owls - were made of similar bones, muscle, guts, fat and flesh - but machines were another thing entirely. They were made of metal, cords, oils, and other materials the Nora had no names for. No one had ever seen a machine reproduce, yet even when they were killed, new machines always seemed to appear to take their place.
As she crouched in the grass, gazing in wonder at the machine, its lenses turned from yellow to blue again, and it left to continue grazing with the rest of the herd.
The little red-haired girl took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had been tasked to simply observe the herd from afar while hidden in the grass, but her mistake had had immediate consequences. She would have to be more careful in the future.
As the strider left hearing range, she turned away from the herd and crept through the grass to the far side, leaving it to join Rost in the shadow of the rock. He was an outcast, as she was, although he had never told her why he was spurned from the Nora. Her surrogate father was built powerfully, with broad shoulders, and he wore a mix of dark leathers and animal skins. His hair was black, tinged with grey, and he braided his long beard into a single thick plait. Every day, he brushed ornamental blue paint onto his face in the same design, with streaks around the curve of his right brow and one on his left cheekbone. Aloy did not know what the markings meant, and he declined to explain them.
"You were lucky that only one machine was alerted to your presence. If it had spotted you upon approach, I would have intervened. You did well to remain calm and still." Even though Aloy had failed, Rost's kind blue eyes conveyed pride. He was not one to give empty compliments. She must have recovered well, then. As she grew up, she would come to realize that mistakes and hardship were inevitable as part of life; the true test of character was how you reacted to them.